Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

Holder’s recent testimony exposed what is going on with prosecution: The benefits system is now the core priority of the federal gov’t, nothing will be done by the leadership that imperils the benefits flow, because if the benefits slow down, they don’t get re-elected.

“Read the entire article. The upshot is that with over 176,000 “quotes” — bids and offers — not one of them turned into an executed trade. Not one.

Just to remind everyone that seems to have forgotten it is illegal to place a bid or offer into the market for any purpose other than to execute a trade.”

The American people, on the majority, don’t care about enforcing fiscal laws. It is a distant second place to expanding benefits and keeping taxes low. They re-elected a man that a) chose not to prosecute the FCIC report b) re-enacted the Bush tax rates he proclaimed were wrong (twice) c) expanded benefits as the economy was failing and d)expanded credit to cure a credit recession.

“There are no bears on Wall Street. The bears on Wall Street will be crushed. We have crushed the bears on Wall Street…but they are not there.”

The system is bought and paid for. All your money are belong to the Ruling Elite. If only this were the ranting of a tin-foil-hat-wearing nut case. But I am probably, if anything, still a tad naive and optimistic.

It’s time to arrest everyone in Washington and everyone on Wall Street. Waterboarding all around until we get the truth…and then more waterboarding, because, hey, they deserve it and it’s not even torture!

Expat – the population is bought by 10,000X more money than flowing to the politicians – check the math on campaign donations and lobbying, and compare it to gov’t benefits. The ratio is around 10,000X . Plato documented what happens when populations vote for benefits – they go corrupt.

And Madison predicts the outcome pretty well too:

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the “general welfare”, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America.”
– James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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